Thursday, 28 December 2017

The spiritual center of the the Southern Italy region is the famously hard-to-reach church at Montevergine

Energy builds among the devotees who pray and sing as the faithful have done here since the thirteenth century. But on February 2nd devotees wear lipstick and stubble and feather boas. By the time night descends, over two thousand gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pilgrims will have passed through this Catholic shrine to worship the icon they call the ‘Madonna of Transformation.’

Inside the darkened church, a procession of now-reverent revelers shuffle shoulder-to-shoulder toward the icon they call Mamma Schiavona, ‘serving mother,’ passing flames to each other on thin white tapers. A male voice calls out in Neapolitan dialect: “O Maronna, quanno si bella.” The crowd responds in unison, praising her beauty and generosity. They look up toward the Virgin who stares back from a golden background, with the Christ child on her lap. Historically, women would lead this type of chanting, but gender is mutable at Montevergine and has been so for millennia.

Mamma Schiavona is one of Italy’s famous black Madonnas. Her adherents describe her as the one who ‘gives everything, forgives everything.’ Her presence on this site has a long lineage rooted in the ancient mother-earth goddess Cybele, with dark skin symbolic of fertile soil.

Centuries ago, the foundations beneath the church supported a temple of Cybele. Brought to Southern Italy from Anatolia, her cult was absorbed into the Greco-Roman world. Rites of Cybele included long, orgiastic rituals of dancing and drumming that today are recognized in the tammurriata, a dance performed between men and men, women and women, and men and women.

“Dancing and drumming could go on for days. As people who worked the earth, they would have had the physical strength and stamina to keep up with the rituals,” says Allison Scola, an expert on Southern Italian folk dance and music. The tammurriata is built around a few simple steps that charge and release sensual energy. Partners can mix movements and react to each other in the moment. Like the whirling dervishes of Sufism, the tammurriata puts people in a trance and prepares the body for spiritual ecstasy and transformation.

The undercurrent of these rituals has always been fertility. In order to be transformed by mother earth, the priests of Cybele, Galli, would castrate themselves, literally sacrificing their own sex. Galli priests were notorious for their long hair, yellow and pink clothing and sexually provocative dances and ceremonies. It is because of Mamma Schiavona’s ancient ancestry that transgender people consider her a protector.

THE FEMMINIELLO OF MONTEVERGINE MONASTERY

In 2002, a group of LGBT pilgrims were thrown out of Montevergine by a priest who became enraged by the sound of their tambourines and castanets. Two weeks later, for the February 2nd Candelora feast, hundreds of LGBT pilgrims and activists returned with Vladimir Luxuria, a former member of parliament and Italy’s most famous transgender person. Candelora at Montevergine was officially established as a day of Femminiello Pride.

Femminiello Pride has an entirely local resonance. Femminielli have been important members of Neapolitan culture since the 1500s, serving as entertainers and prostitutes, but with high social standing. The closest parallel today might be the Thai Kathoei or ‘lady boys,’ – biological men who identify as women.

THE THAI KATHOEI

The devotion to an icon which has been distinctly linked to the LGBT community since the Middle Ages. In 1256, Mamma Schiavona rescued a homosexual couple from death. Local folklore says that two men en route to worship her were seen kissing and holding hands. The crowd turned angry, stripped them of their clothes, and tied them to a barren tree where they would either be eaten by wolves or die of frostbite. Mamma Schiavona, moved by the couple’s love for each other, rescued them from their chains and allowed them to live together openly in front of the community as proof of her miracle.

PAT SAYS:It seems to me that the phenomenon of femminielli is an ancient one and while it has some overrun into the whole question of homosexuality and transgender today - the two things do not, at least culturally and historically completely overlap.It also seems to me that the LGTB community in Italy has certainly become very interested and involved in the Femminielli movement that surrounds Montevergine Monastery.I believe that there are elements within the Italian and Vatican priesthood that see the Montevergine happening as an opportunity to further the homosexualization of the Catholic priesthood.What better way to bring attention to themselves than to include a very attractive naked young man at the heart of the Vatican 2017 Nativity scene - a scene that would be pictured all over the globe.This is not a coincidence. This was thought out and planned in a very subtle way.Why, for instance, could the man who needed to clothed not have been a 65-year-old unattractive beggar in torn garments?Instead, he was a very attractive, highly toned gym specimen. An attractive young man like that, who could afford a gym-perfect body, would hardly be likely to not to be able to afford clothes.No, someone, somewhere, in Montevergine Monastery or in The Vatican was sending a very clear message.

74 comments:

Pat, you have an active, rampant sexual imagination and a worrying, misguided preoccupation in attributing sinister motivations and interpretations where they don't exist. Tell us what you believe the clear message you allege might be sent by the Monastery or Vatican! Your sexual imagination is to be expected yet again but for spurious and speculative reasons. What concerns for a supposedly busy man!

We would not need to ask Paddy Power for odds as you should not be gambling but the sad news for you all is the CHURCH will still be here when paddy power and all theses Sect or whatever you want to call them will long be GONE.Our Lady will save her Church.

17.48: Magna. Yes, 17.16 is absolutely correct. You're of no relevance to anyone except the image you see in your cracked mirror! Hopefully 2018 might be a moment of new beginnings for you...ha,ha,ha....

No, 21:24. Your level of English comprehension is lamentable. 17:16 did not say that I am irrelevant to anyone save my image in a cracked mirror, but to those who post anonymously here. Cant you read? (Well, no; of course you cant.😆)

Whatever the so-called "clear message" was supposed to be seems to have badly missed the target! It doesn't seem to be very "clear" to many of the posters who commented on here over the last few days at any rate. LOL

Pat, has the Church reached the tipping point of no return in relation to the homosexualisation of the clergy?

What would you say to a heterosexual man who strongly believes that God might be calling him to be a priest but is worried about placing himself in such an unhealthy environment, spiritually and humanly, for 6 or 7 years?

Having been in there doing 'favours' for the dean was the way to survive. It was as if we had to prostitute ourselves before being considered 'worthy' of ordination. I hope Fr. Donal's new wife is happy with her excuse of a husband because he most certainly did not have a priestly vocation.

Really a SAD day for this young man as he has taken the time to come here be interested if he spoke to his Vocations director, Bishop or Papal Nuncio as no use on here the people in Authority must be told.And before any you say they are all tarred with the same brush they are not.If this guy has a TRUE Vocation then he should approach the Archbishop of Dublin and go to the Irish college or I am sure any other Diocese in the UK would take him as many diocese are eager.

The sad thing is if that young man told the "formators" he would have been swiftly ejected while the aggressors would have received some sort of promotion. It is a very sad and sickening state that the Irish is in.

To 14.09Are you for real??? AB Martin has ignored seminarians for years and only reacted as he did when the media got wind of Maynooth's funny business. Whatever about the new Nuncio Charles Brown was in on the cover up. The people in authority do not care.

What's all the fuss about. Nudity is not the shock it used to be. Many Irish people go to nudist beaches. The continent is full of family saunas where clothing is put aside as soon as one enters. There's a far more relaxed attitude to nakedness now in Ireland than there used to be. Those who protest have ulterior motives.

I wonder to what level must the number of seminarians in Maynooth drop to before it close? Five, ten? It's ridiculous.

As to why they need two deans for a seminary community of around 15 defeats me. In the 80s, when I was there, there were three deans for a resident seminarian community of 350. The junior dean, Frank Duhig, had over 120 in his care.

Having two deans for 15 gives the deans too much time on their hands and allows them to fill their day probing and head twisting the seminarians.

It was the Irish Catholic which said there were 15. According to the 2016-17 Kalendarium the number of resident diocesan seminarians was in the low thirties, and there was an unprecedentedly low intake this year.

The number of lay students is irrelevant. Maynooth was founded and has it's principle mission the formation of priests.

As a Pontifical University, Maynooth is not thriving. Despite the closure of two big competitors (Milltown Park, and All Hallows), Maynooth's numbers and CAO points continue to fall. Well below 1,000 students. Many secondary schools are bigger.

Maynooth is a Grindr powerhouse, that is all it is. How long must the people in the pews be burdened with collections to keep that place open. Being interested in how many candidates there are for priesthood is not clericalist. if it is, we might as well give up and hand the place over to Maynooth University.

Maynooth is only open because the NUIM pay rent to use the former accommodation blocks for offices. This is indirect State aid to the Church, and should be stopped immediately. Seperate Church and State, my tax should not be supporting the sexual misconduct of anybody.

I made a Freedom of Information request to Maynooth a few years ago. It revealed that the modern or North campus is on a 999 year lease from the church. The old, South campus is owned entirely by the church. NUIM pays millions a year for use of the buildings and grounds. The church charges it's own development agency Trocaire, almost a million a year to occupy the top floor of Long Corridor.

NUIM has renewal 10 year leases on most of the former seminary buildings it occupies. But the lease on New House is for one year at a time, in case it is ever needed again to provide bedrooms for seminarians.

There's very little room on the North campus. It was built on fields that were part of the college farm, but is not hemmed in by housing etc. It suits NUIM to be on the South campus. Buildings not used by them feature prominently in their marketing and they use the South campus for photo ops and to attract students. They are playing a long game and know that it will be all theirs, sooner or later.

You or Pat or an interested journalist could put in an FoI request asking how much the lease of the North campus cost NUIM, what buildings it occupies on the South campus and how much rent is paid for the use of buildings, grounds and utilities costs on the church-owned South campus.

I hope you all have the Icon for the Year of the Family as it is out now and what a CREDIT to the Redemptioniste Nuns in Saint Augustine Monastery who designed it.The Holy Father will be well happy and the Holy People of Ireland will turn out as the eyes of the World are on them

Plenty. Here's a list, and more importantly they are growing while the Spirit of Vatican II establishments are residential homes for the aged and infirm. One quarter of all ordinations in France are in Traddie orders.

Consider Ireland for a moment. Silverstream priory is putting accepted candidates on a waiting list for admission. Not a problem afflicting Glenstal.

I provided a list. Do the math as the Americans say. That one-quarter of French ordinations are coming from the Trads is remarkable, in a secularised country and in an ecclesiastical context in that was all abolished and only old fuddy-duddys like it, they said. The proportion will rise and I predict that within ten years Silverstream Priory will have more ordinations than Maynooth.

Hello 19.34. Put your money where your mouth is. Anyone who knows anything about the two monasteries in Ireland you mention is smiling wryly at your blinkered vision or at your naivety. In other words, one wonders whether your delusion is accompanied my self awareness. To give you the benefit of the doubt, one presumes it is not.

19:34, I could have posted this earlier, but laughter precluded it. Silverstream Priory (which you so admire) sets great store by the musings of Therese of Lisieux. You couldn't make this up! A priory of 'traddies' values the thoughts of a 19th century modernist. Oh, Jeez!😃

Magna, the true believer, would obviously rather have the monks study the teachings of his beloved Medjugorje fraud. He lacks the intelligence and education to see that St Therese of Lisieux is on a completely different level. Idiot.What's the matter Maggie, did the Carmelites turn you down as well?

OMG! Years ago at an auction in the middle of nowhere I won a 19th century reproduction of that very Madonna. The competition for it must have been stiff. I think I paid ten dollars for it. I did know her title but not the significance until now. I think a church in NJ is dedicated to her. I’m kicking myself now because I think I sold her. Alas, to think that my porch could have become another Knock or Walsingham!

Why did the monastery have to sponsor the Vatican crib? Surely the Holy See can afford it? Or is it like the Olympics where a company pays sponsorship to promote a message? What message is being promoted here?